


John Watson and the One Thousand Paper Cranes

by astudyinrose



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcoholic John, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, Post-Reichenbach, loosely based on Sadako and the One Thousand Paper Cranes, not John or Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 01:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4727744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astudyinrose/pseuds/astudyinrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trying to keep his life going after Sherlock's death, John takes a job in a hospital. One day he comes across a girl in the cancer ward who is trying to fold 1000 paper cranes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John Watson and the One Thousand Paper Cranes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scullyseviltwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/gifts).



> Thanks so much to Tenaya, Lori and Fabi for helping me through this.
> 
> This is for my lovely, beautiful Leslie. Happy Birthday darling.

John Watson had never believed in luck. 

He had also never been superstitious. When he broke a mirror, he simply swept it up. When he spilled salt, he didn’t toss any over his shoulder. 

On that sunny day in June, though, John wished that he had had some luck to fall back on. He wondered if all the bad luck he’d accumulated over his entire lifetime had somehow culminated in this one tragedy, this one event. Now he couldn’t undo all the times he’d walked past black cats or under ladders. He could only stand at the grave, shaking, trying to keep his fist clenched so that it wouldn’t tremble.   

Looking back after that day, try as he might, he couldn’t remember what he had said while he stood there, except for the last part. “Don’t be dead. Please. Just for me.”

That part would seep into his very bones, like a cancer. 

He wished he had tried to save up his luck to use now.

 

* * *

John took a few jumpers from Baker Street and moved back into the same bedsit he’d lived in before he’d met Sherlock. He didn’t take any furniture, and he never went back to 221B after. 

Occasionally, he woke up in the middle of the night at a noise from the flat below, and he would think it was Sherlock experimenting on something downstairs. Then he would remember.

Working at Bart’s was out of the question, of course, so he took a position at St. Pancras, filling in the shifts no one else wanted. It didn’t matter if it was day or night, raining or shining, when he left the hospital. He always felt the same. 

His life felt like a nightmare from which he would never wake. A year passed, but he wouldn’t be able to recall what had happened if someone had asked. The colour had been drained from everything—the danger, the laughter, the promise of a future. It all had died along with Sherlock. He lived day to day, wondering sometimes if he would have the courage to kiss his gun and find out if there really was an afterlife. He didn’t really believe in heaven or hell, but at least he’d either be with Sherlock again, or he’d be nothing.

 

* * *

People always thought there was an overhanging stench, or a harbinger, of death in hospitals. But the cancer ward wasn’t like that. Most of the time that wing was quiet, a place of peace. It was like a deep breath before plunging underwater. 

One day in early summer, John was walking through the ward on his way to a consult when he passed by a private room. The walls were the same sterile shade of grey as the rest of the patient rooms in the hospital, but this room was vibrant with color despite that. The afternoon sunlight filtered in through hundreds of pieces of colored paper that were strung up on the ceiling. John stepped in, looking up, and when he was directly underneath them, he could see that they were origami paper cranes.  

“What are you doing here?”

John almost jumped at the voice, its tenor so fragile that he barely heard it.  

There was a little girl tucked in the sheets of the bed. Her head was covered with white bandages, and her skin almost completely faded into the white smock she was wearing.The only differentiation between the girl and the sheets of the bed behind her was her large, dark eyes, like dark pools of water in deep winter. They seemed bigger proportionally than they should be. John had seen it before in children who were nearing the end of terminal illness.  

She had oxygen tubes in her nose, but she seemed to be sitting up without too much aid, and she had a canteen tray on her lap, but no food. Instead, there were several brightly colored pieces of paper in front of her, as well as several carefully folded cranes.

“I’m here to check on you,” John said, pulling himself up to his full doctorly height and stepping over to the bed to pick up her chart, as if he were supposed to be there. “I’m Doctor Watson, by the way.”  

“Chiyo,” the girl said. “But I usually go by Chi.”

“Nice to meet you, Chi,” John said. “Where are your parents?” 

“It’s just my father. He’s at the canteen.” 

John nodded absently as he flipped her chart open, skimming it quickly.  

He felt the air in his lungs rush out as he read what it said: the girl had a brain tumor. She had been through two prior operations, and chemotherapy seemed to have been ineffective. She was already stage four, and mets had been found in her liver. Even though she was ten years old, she looked much younger. The cancer treatments must have stunted her growth. 

John cleared his throat, looking up at her over the chart. “Who made the cranes?” he asked. 

Chi raised her eyebrow. “I did. What, do you think because I have cancer I can’t fold some pieces of paper?”

John raised his eyebrow back. "Of course not." He put the chart back in its place and walked around the bed, putting his stethoscope in his ears then leaning in to listen to her chest.  

Her breathing was a bit ragged, but her heart sounded good. Her pulse was slow but steady.

Chi looked up at him curiously, and her eyes emanated an intelligence that seemed beyond her years.

“Are you my new doctor?” she asked dubiously. 

“No,” John said, shaking his head as he leaned back. He took the stethoscope out of his ears and slung it around his neck again. “I’m just filling in. How’s your pain? Do you need more morphine?” 

The girl stared at him for a long moment. “Considering I’m the one who’s dying, you seem a lot more depressed than I am,” the girl said bluntly, not answering his question. “Who died?”

John felt his eyes widen and his nostrils flare slightly. No one he came in contact with day-to-day ever asked him that, because everyone already knew. Most everyone went out of their way not to talk about it. He’d gotten used to feeling like a leper, or like a bird everyone was frightened of scaring off. 

“It’s not… I don’t…” John stuttered, caught off guard. He tucked his chin into his chest as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. He rocked back on his heels, trying to regain composure. 

Chi tilted her head to the side, watching him. 

“Erm…” he cleared his throat. “Why are you making the cranes? For decoration?”

The girl squinted at him, and John had a strange feeling that she could see right through him. It reminded him so forcibly of Sherlock that he had to look away.

“Why don’t you sit down, Doctor Watson,” she said, picking up a new piece of paper and folding it over delicately to make a triangle. 

“I’m just fine—” John started to say. 

“You look like you need it,” she said without looking up. 

John rubbed the back of his neck. That wasn’t untrue; he had been working for about thirty hours straight and hadn’t been off his feet the entire time. He still had to do that consult, but it would keep for another ten minutes. 

John looked around for a chair, found one by the door, and pulled it over.  

“So why are you making these?” John prompted again. 

Chi looked up from her paper at him. “Have you heard the story of Sadako and the One Thousand Paper Cranes?" 

“Can’t say I have.”

“I’ll tell it to you.” Chi swallowed audibly, and John could see that her lips seemed too dry. He automatically reached for the water on the bedside table and helped her sit up. As she drank, she never stopped looking up at him. Her gaze was deeply unsettling for a reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint. 

“Thanks,” she said, lying back after a few sips. 

John nodded, holding the water in his lap in case she needed more.  

She licked her lips, her tiny pink tongue sticking out just a little bit, like a cat. Then she closed her eyes, and after a few seconds of silence John thought she had fallen asleep. He was just about to get up and leave her to her rest when she spoke again. 

“My father has told me this story since I was very little.”

She breathed a few times, slowly, but John stayed still, waiting. 

“There was once a girl who lived in Japan a long time ago. One day, something horrible came down from the sky. There was a brilliant flash of light, and in a single second many thousands of people were gone.” 

John felt his eyebrows lift. That sounded exactly how a little girl would describe the atom bombs in World War II.

 “The girl was not far from where the horrible thing fell, but somehow she and her family survived. Many years later, she became very sick.” 

Chi opened her eyes. “She had cancer too. A different kind than mine. She had lots of spots on her legs and lumps on her neck.”

 _Leukemia_ , John thought. He nodded, just a small tilt of his head. 

“The girl was so sick that she couldn’t go anywhere, so one day she started folding paper cranes.” She pointed up at the strings of cranes overhead. “There’s a legend that if you fold a thousand paper cranes, your wish will be granted. So she tried to fold a thousand, hoping that once she did, she would be cured.” 

John pressed his lips together, glancing upward. He tried to estimate how many cranes there were based on how many were on a string and how many strings he could see. 

“Three hundred and twenty three,” Chi said before he could finish. “I make about ten per day if I’m feeling well. Less on the days when my head hurts too much and everything goes blurry.”

John swallowed, doing the math in his head. Chi might not have enough time to make them all, if the projected amount of time she had left on the chart was accurate.

“What happened to her? The girl?” he asked quietly.

“She died,” Chi said, her voice emotionless. 

The silence in the room was punctured only by the soft beeping of her heart rate monitor. The trees beyond the window started to sway back and forth in the darkness, as if a storm was coming. John blinked, looking at them. He had been in the hospital so long that he had forgotten whether it was day or night. He had no idea how long they stayed that way, not speaking, but it felt like a long time, suspended in time as his entire life had been for more than a year.

“What happened to you, Doctor Watson?” Chi asked eventually, her voice so quiet he could barely hear her.

John sighed, rubbing his eyes with one hand. He had put up so many carefully constructed barriers, had divided his life up into so many tiny pieces and put them all in boxes and stuffed them far back in his mind, that he hardly remembered anything anymore. This one little girl was ripping all of his wounds open again, but instead of running in the opposite direction, he stayed and let it happen.

During the first months after Sherlock had jumped, everyone kept asking him how he felt. They asked him if they could do anything for him, watching him with a mixture of pity and awkwardness. 

Chi's eyes didn’t hold the gaze most people looked at him with. Instead, she looked at him with understanding. It was the kind of understanding that only the dead and dying have for one another. He was a dead man walking, and Chi knew it. 

John closed his eyes. “I lost someone,” he said, his throat dry. It was true, but it was desaturated language. “ _I’m sorry for your loss_ ,” people always said. He said it to people all the time as a doctor. But it simply didn’t delineate the violence of the act, the selfishness of someone taking their own life. Nor did it encapsulate the ravaged wasteland of being the one left behind.   

John cleared his throat again. “Will you show me how to make those?” John said, gesturing toward the sheets of paper. “I’ll help you.”

Chi shook her head. “No, that’s not how it works, Doctor Watson. I have to fold all of my own cranes or my wish won’t be granted. You should do your own.” 

“There’s nothing left for me to wish for.” 

Chi smiled crookedly, one side higher than the other. “I think there is,” she said. 

John felt his brow furrow, but he didn’t protest. He did have something to wish for, but it was impossible. John felt tears pricking his eyes, but he fought them back, blinking quickly. 

Chi watched him for a long moment, then nodded very seriously. “Okay, here you go,” she said, handing him a red square of paper and taking a new one of her own.

John took the paper, sitting down again and taking one of the other trays on her nightstand. 

“Before I teach you… are you sure you want to make yourself hope?” Chi asked. 

John took a deep breath. Hope was dangerous, she was right. Until now he had never let himself hope, because Sherlock was gone, and there was no bringing him back.

After a moment, he nodded.

“Okay, then let’s begin.”

 

* * *

When John got back to the bedsit, he reached into his pocket to take out the slightly rumpled red crane and put it on his desk. He sat down on his bed and stared at the misshapen piece of paper. This was completely and utterly ridiculous. He had finally gone mad. This was the final proof.

He shrugged and stood up to put the kettle on. As he waited for it to boil he looked out the window at the lightening sky. Nothing had changed, yet for some reason, for the first time in over a year, he didn’t hate seeing the sun rise.

 

* * *

1 crane

 

The next day, John went to a local paper store and bought several hundred sheets of origami paper. 

“There’s a book too, if you’re teaching young children how to do origami,” the clerk said, smiling, as she scanned all the packages. “We have teachers in here all the time. What level do you teach?”

“I don’t, it’s all for me,” John said, smiling, though it felt more like a grimace.  

The clerk’s smile faltered, but she recovered quickly. “Nice to have a hobby, eh?” 

John laughed, pretending to be good-natured. “Oh, definitely.”

 

* * *

43 cranes

 

John fell into a routine. He would work his shift at the hospital, and at the end of each shift he would take a new stack of origami paper, grab a couple of sandwiches, and walk to the cancer ward.  

For hours on end, he and Chi would fold cranes and talk about anything from the countries he had visited (leaving out the gorier aspects of why he had been there) to her favorite math teacher. He was still slow, (triangle, triangle, kite, long triangle, wings, head, repeat), but there was something meditative about making the tiny paper birds.  

When he finally got to his first hundred, he strung them through a piece of clothes line and attached it to the ceiling in his new flat. He lay down on his bed with the window open, and watched the colored cranes dance lightly in the summer breeze.

 

* * *

135 cranes

 

Chi was released from the hospital under home care as the leaves began to fall. John helped her father carefully pack her cranes in boxes and put them in the backseat of their car.  

John wheeled her to the curb as her father was bringing the car around. 

“Doctor Watson,” she said, turning her head slightly toward him. John quickly walked around so that he could stand in front of her.  

She took his hand in her two small ones, looking up at him with shortened breaths. 

“Make sure… you finish the cranes. No matter what happens,” Chi said. “For Sherlock.”

John frowned. He’d never told her about Sherlock, and he hadn’t heard anyone say the name in more than a year.

Chi’s face cracked into a little grin. “I do have an internet connection on my phone, you know,” she said.

John pressed his lips together. He nodded, once.

“Promise?” she said. 

“Promise.” 

As her father drove the car away, Chi pressed the palm of her hand to the window. John waved, trying to fight off the feeling of dread deep in his stomach.

 

 

* * *

268 cranes

 

Greg came over without calling first. He seemed to have realised that John was avoiding him. 

He gave John a DVD that he and Sherlock had made for John’s birthday one year. John tried to seem lighthearted, making jokes, but all he could concentrate on was the feeling of the plastic case under his fingers. 

After Greg left, John walked straight over to his cabinet and poured himself three fingers of scotch. He drank it all in one gulp, then poured another.  

It was a full twenty minutes (and a very healthy buzz) before he could make himself press play.

Seeing Sherlock on the screen, smaller yet larger than life, talking, was almost more than he could bear. But he also couldn’t get enough. Sherlock was dead, but not dead; he was alive on the screen and in memory, but he was only a phantom. John drank more, watching Sherlock awkwardly speak to Greg off-screen. 

“Right, I just...I need a moment to, um, figure out what I’m going to do.” Sherlock turned, walking away from the camera. 

John looked down at his glass, wishing it would fill itself again. “I’ll tell you what you can do, you can stop being dead,” he mumbled.

“Okay,” Sherlock said, walking back into view. 

John felt his heart leap in his throat as he looked up in surprise. This wasn’t Sherlock, he knew that; it was just some images captured on film. Yet for some reason, John couldn’t stop watching, wondering what was going to happen next.

“Oh, and don’t worry, I’ll be with you again, very soon,” Sherlock said, smiling.

The doorbell rang, and John felt his stomach drop out as he looked toward the front of the house.   

He set his drink down, pausing the recording as he stood up and walked over to the foyer. John closed his eyes with his hand on the door, then opened it.

Chi’s father was leaning against the doorframe, looking completely exhausted.  

“Mr. Hatayama,” John said, trying to keep the crushing, albeit ridiculous, disappointment from entering his expression. “Please, please come in,” John said, standing back to let him in.

Chi’s father stood up straighter. “No, thank you, Doctor.” 

When John met his eyes, he knew instantly. “How bad?” he asked, bile rising in his throat. 

“The nurse says it’s the end,” Mr. Hatayama said, his eyes deadened.  

 _Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck._  

“The end,” John repeated hoarsely. 

Mr. Hatayama nodded grimly. “Can you come? Chi asked for you.”

John pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes, trying to stop the spinning in his head. _Not again._

“Doctor Watson?” A hand was on his shoulder.

John lowered his hand. “Of course, of course I’ll come,” John said, grabbing his coat and keys and shutting the door behind himself.

 

* * *

That night, he came home, poured himself a scotch, and immediately drained it. 

He walked into his bedroom, looking up at the cranes on his ceiling. He tried to ignore the burning feeling in his chest, his lungs, but it started to consume him like a wildfire. He stood up on his bed and ripped two strings of cranes down, taking them into the living room and throwing them in his fireplace. He lit a match, hesitating for a moment before he threw it on top. As he poured himself another scotch, he watched the paper curling under the flames. The scotch wasn’t numbing him enough, and for the first time in his life he wished he had something even stronger.

 

* * *

0 cranes

 

It was a beautiful, clear winter day, snow flurrying down and melting into droplets on the shiny black wood as the casket was lowered into the ground.  

Mr. Hatayama nodded at John, and they both emptied box after box of cranes on top of the casket. There were nine hundred and forty-three.

 

* * *

It took him a month to go back to the hospital. When he finally did, the supervising doctor said nothing about his long absence. Instead, she looked at him with that pitying look, as if he were something broken that no longer had any hope of being fixed. 

 

* * *

John sat at the bar, drinking his third glass of whiskey. He had gotten there early on purpose, because he needed to numb himself a bit. It wasn’t really working. 

John drained his glass, tapping it once. “Another.”

Mr. Hatayama sat down next to him just as the bartender was pouring the fourth glass, looking at John with a slightly wary look. 

“Started without me?” Mr. Hatayama said, signaling to the bartender. “Pint of lager, please.”

John picked up his glass. “A bit,” he said. He clenched his left fist, trying to keep it from trembling. It was harder to control the more he drank.

“Doctor Watson—” Mr. Hatayama began.

“Call me John,” John said, not looking up from his glass. 

“John,” he said, nodding. “I wanted to give you something.” 

John looked up to see that Mr. Hatayama was holding a crane. It was perfectly folded and crisp, a light summer yellow color. 

“It was the last one she made,” Mr. Hatayama said, his face inscrutable. 

John stared at the crane, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he gulped down the rest of his whiskey.

“She wanted you to have it,” Mr. Hatayama continued. He put the crane on the bar next to John’s hand. “She told me—that last day, before she—” he broke off, his voice wavering.

The bartender brought his beer. “Cheers,” Mr. Hatayama said, taking a long drink.

John hunched his shoulders more, feeling exhaustion creeping into his very bones.  

“She told me,” Mr. Hatayama started again, “that she knew once she… went, that you would quit. She said that I should give this to you later, and remind you why you were folding the cranes.” 

John closed his eyes, turning his head slightly to the side, saying nothing. Of course, Chi had been right. He’d given up.

“Mr. Hatayama, all due respect—” he began. 

“Please, call me Ken,” Mr. Hatayama interrupted.

“Ken,” John said. “I know that the story meant a lot to you both, and that Chi really believed that the cranes could save her. I just… I don’t believe in this stuff. I don’t know why I was doing it in the first place. The reason I was folding them—the person I was—he died. He’s gone. There’s no way folding some pieces of paper could change that.”

Mr. Hatayama sighed. “Chi also said you’d say something like that.” He smiled a watery smile, looking at John over his wire-rimmed glasses. “She was wise beyond her years, as I’m sure you noticed.”

“I did,” John said, his voice hoarse and a bitter aftertaste on his tongue. He badly wanted to order another drink, but he had a feeling that the bartender wouldn’t sell him any more. He still had half a bottle of scotch at home, but he could stop at the Tesco on the way home and by some more malt.

“She didn’t want you to give up,” Mr. Hatayama said. 

“She _died_ ,” John said sharply. 

Mr. Hatayama winced, and John immediately regretted it. “I’m—I’m sorry—” he stuttered. “I just. I can’t.”

He got up, throwing some notes on the bar, and turned to leave.

“John,” Mr. Hatayama stood, catching his arm. “Please, just take it with you. It was the last thing she asked me to do. Please.” He picked up the crane and held it out to John. “She said to say… you promised.” 

John clenched his left hand once, pressing his lips together. He was looking at the crane, but what he was seeing instead were Chi’s tiny hands around his one bigger one, and her dark, serious eyes looking up at him.He nodded once, stiffly. He took the crane, turning and walking out of the bar without another word.

 

* * *

“John, wake up.” A hand shook his shoulder lightly. “John.” 

“Bugger off,” John muttered, squeezing his eyes more tightly shut. 

“ _John._ ” The hand shook him more forcefully. 

John groaned, cracking his eyes open. 

“What,” he said hoarsely. His head was pounding, his throat was parched, and his neck was unbelievably stiff. It took him a moment to realize that he was sitting against his front door. He apparently hadn’t even made it inside his flat the night before, but he couldn’t remember why. His gaze fell on a paper bag next to him, which seemed to contain a mostly empty bottle of something. 

“Here.” Harry thrust a water bottle under his nose. “I bet you want some of this.” 

John took a few grateful gulps, then leaned his head back against the door, closing his eyes. 

He could hear Harry sigh, then she sat down next to him, crossing her arms and leaning them against her knees. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, love,” she said. “Believe me, I know.” 

“Or what?” John snapped.

“Or you’ll destroy yourself.”

John tilted his head to look at her through the slits of his eyes, but he said nothing. Her mouth tightened, the way it did before they were going to get into a row.  

“You don’t think he would have wanted you to go on living?” she said quietly. 

“He didn’t give a shit, Harry,” John said, not even bothering to deny that this was because of Sherlock. “He killed himself without a thought of what it would do to me.”

“John,” Harry groaned. “There has to be something else that would keep you going.” 

John looked out at the street in front of them, people going to work, living their lives. 

“There was for a little while,” he said after a long silence. “But she died too.” 

Harry propped her chin on her arms. “A patient?” 

John nodded. He reached into his pocket, pulling the crane out. Harry raised an eyebrow.

“It was hers?”

“Yeah.”

Harry didn’t say anything for a long moment, looking at the crane. “What does it mean?”

“It was supposed to be a reminder of a promise I made.” 

“Are you going to keep it?”

John sighed, pocketing the crane again. He pushed himself up off the ground and struggled to his feet. “I have to shower and make myself some coffee, then get to the hospital.” He didn’t look at her as he took his keys out and unlocked the door.

“John--”  

“Harry, I don’t want to hear it.”

He heard Harry sigh in exasperation, but she didn’t say anything else, and he heard her footsteps fading away as he closed the door behind him.

 

* * *

Almost exactly a year after he had first been in Chi’s room, John was given an assignment to do a consult in the cancer wing. Time was a wheel, turning on its axis and coming back full circle, tormenting him, it seemed.

Afterward, he walked down the familiar hallway toward the main wing, and he passed by what was once her room, willing himself not to look inside. A few steps after he passed the threshold, he stopped, closing his eyes and clenching his left fist. 

Eventually he straightened up, turned on his heel, and walked back down the hall and into her room. 

Without all the colored cranes, it was just the same as all the other rooms in the hospital. Harry’s cajoling had done nothing, and neither had Mr. Hatayama’s pleading. But being in this room made him feel ashamed of giving up, and of the drinking. Everything.

He reached in his pocket, pulling out the yellow crane, which he had carried with him every day. He re-folded the tiny paper head, smoothing out the wings. 

He sat on the bed, listening to the silence for a long time, looking at the tiny folded crane in his hands. 

“Okay,” he said out loud, nodding. “Okay.” 

He got up, walking out of the room, checking his watch. The paper store would still be open if he left now.

 

 

* * *

6 months later

999 cranes

 

John stared at the piece of paper in his hands. It was a particularly brilliant shade of blue, like the summer ocean under a sunny sky.  

This was it. The last one. 

He looked up at the ceiling, at the hundreds of brightly colored cranes up above. He counted them one more time, even though he had already done it half a dozen times, just to be sure. There were nine hundred and ninety-nine. 

He stared down at the paper again, but he couldn’t bring himself to start folding it. Making the cranes had been part folly, part a compulsion, part a reason to hope. If he folded the last one, that would be it. He would have no more reason to hope, no more reason to do anything. 

John sat down on his bed, his head in his hands and his stomach in knots. He hadn’t realised until that exact moment that he had actually been hoping that this would work, that it would bring Sherlock back. 

“Stupid,” John said into his hands. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

He got up, putting the piece of paper in his pocket. He slid on his old black jacket and strode from the flat.

He walked aimlessly, passing by many pubs and shops, fighting the urge to go in and get hammered. 

John walked until it was dark, and eventually found himself at St. Bart’s. He stood in the spot where he’d stood when Sherlock had jumped, when he’d last heard Sherlock’s voice in real life.

The final piece of paper was still in his pocket. 

John sat down on a bench near the ambulance bay. Despite the fact that he must look quite insane, sitting in a hospital parking lot in the dead of night, slowly, methodically, he folded it.

When he was finished, he looked up again, at the roof. He sat there for a long time, giving his final goodbye. 

Eventually, he walked the long walk all the way back to his flat.  

As he turned the corner to his flat, he saw a figure in a long coat standing on his porch.

John stopped short. “No,” he said under his breath. 

This had to be a joke. Someone was trying to drive him insane. Or, more likely, he finally had gone insane. 

As he stood there, completely immobile, the figure on the porch walked forward, out of the darkness. Once the figure moved under the light of a streetlamp, he could see dark curly hair. 

“Oh you have got to be _fucking_ kidding me,” John muttered. 

In a haze of adrenalin and hope, John walked forward until he was under the light of the same street lamp, close enough to see the outlines of Sherlock’s face. 

Sherlock’s expression was one of faint hope and tight anxiety, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Otherwise, he looked just as he always had, right down to the tailored suit under his Belstaff. 

“John--” Sherlock started.

John didn’t say a word, closing the last few steps between them, pulling his arm back and punching Sherlock in the jaw with all his strength.

Sherlock took the blow hard, falling onto his back, and John knelt, grabbing him by the collar. He was about to sock him again, but for some reason he paused when he saw Sherlock’s expression of calm serenity.

Sherlock wasn’t struggling, or fighting back. He was letting John hit him, without protest... as if he thought he deserved it.

John lowered his fist slowly, his anger just starting to dissipate. The fact that Sherlock was beneath him, solid, real, actually _there_ \--it was too much. John was suddenly extremely aware that the final crane was still in his pocket. 

“Bloody hell,” John swore. "Bloody, fucking _hell_ , Sherlock."

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said. “John, I-- Please--” 

John didn’t say anything, instead letting his forehead fall to Sherlock’s chest. His hands fisted in Sherlock’s coat, and he felt the tears starting to prick his eyes. He didn’t believe in fate or luck, but somehow, Sherlock had come back to him.  

“John, perhaps we should get off the street.” 

John raised his head. “You arsehole,” he said, but it didn’t have any heat. 

Sherlock’s face was still full of anxiety, so John pushed himself up and stood, holding out his hand.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” John said gruffly.

Sherlock took his hand, and John helped him up, then pulled him into a hug. He fisted his hands into the back of Sherlock’s coat.  

Sherlock stayed stiff for a long moment, his arms at his sides. Then, slowly, he raised them to encircle John’s body. They stayed like that for a long time, neither of them moving, or saying anything.

Later that night, John took the final crane out of his pocket and put it in on his bedside table. _Thank you_ , he thought, then went back into the living room and started packing his things. 

 

* * *

1000 cranes

 

The phone rang several times, and John was about to hang up when the other end finally clicked. 

“Hello,” Mr. Hatayama’s voice said.

“Hello, Ken. It’s John. Doctor Watson.”

“John! Are you well?”

John poked his head out of the kitchen to look over at Sherlock, his curly head bent over something on the living room table and his expression one of intense concentration.  

“I am,” John said, tucking his chin into his neck and smiling. “I just wanted to tell you that I kept my promise. I finished a thousand.” 

There was a long silence on the other end, and John waited, pressing his lips together. 

“And?” Mr. Hatayama said, his voice a bit wobbly.

John looked at Sherlock again, and as if he could sense his gaze, Sherlock looked up at John. As their gaze met, his lips slid upward into a grin.

John grinned back.

“Somehow, despite all odds, my wish came true.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Chiyo means “a thousand years” in Japanese (“chi” means thousand).
> 
> The Story of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes is a story that was published in 1977, based on the true story of a little girl who had leukemia after being exposed to radiation during the bombings at Hiroshima. In the tale, she didn’t finish making all the cranes before her death, However, according to historical accounts, Sadako and her friends and family made more than 1,300 cranes before she died.
> 
> I decided to write Mary out of this story, as you can see. In this universe, John never meets Mary and therefore goes into a tail spin/full-blown drinking problem. The reunion scene is therefore in a different setting since John didn’t propose to Mary and therefore wouldn’t be in that restaurant when Sherlock returned.


End file.
